


Chance Encounters of the Quarantine Kind

by fluentinfandom796



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Quarantine, Cosette is a dual major in engineering and fashion, F/M, Marius learns all the languages, The author does not know vector calculus so apologies in advance if that's what you're looking for, Vector Calculus?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25822999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluentinfandom796/pseuds/fluentinfandom796
Summary: Marius goes to the wrong Zoom call.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	Chance Encounters of the Quarantine Kind

_This isn’t ‘Intermediate Czech’_. Marius took in the unfamiliar faces that filled his computer screen and instantly regretted manually inputting the join code on his laptop. 

“Welcome back to ‘Vector Calculus for Engineers’. I trust that the homework has been sufficiently challenging?” Marius opened his mouth to answer “yes” when he realized three things. One, he had no idea what vector calculus was, so he couldn’t have done the homework. Two, his mic was muted, so he couldn’t answer anyway. And three, he had just found the love of his life. 

“...and so yeah, that’s 3e. At least that’s what I got, sir.” Marius pursed his lips to hold back his cry of astonishment. _This blonde angel makes total sense! Maybe I should be a math major. Wait no, I barely passed pre-calculus and hated every minute._

“Right again, Miss Fauchelevent.” She smiled at the praise, and Marius had a sudden vision of that same smile walking down the aisle at their wedding. _Finally, I have a name for her_ . He opened up his Czech notes to a new page and frantically scribbled “Fauchelevent - last name of blonde, smart, angelic smile - engineer?” He glanced at the clock. _Already 2:15? Math has never passed so quickly._

After half an hour, Marius had pored over every square inch of the girl’s room. The sparse decorations had, nevertheless, clearly been chosen with care. The bookshelf in the left corner was clearly organized by color, but Marius could see numerous classics, that he had on his own shelf, right alongside an anthology of _Vogue_ . The three photographs on her messy cosmetics table all featured her with an older man. In each picture, she smiled contentedly, while he regarded her with a soft fondness. The man’s eyes never met the camera’s gaze. Her bed was neatly made to her right. Marius added “well-read, photogenic, marry me” to his notes. He glanced up again, considered, and wrote down “ _Medea_ next to _Vogue_?”

“That’s all for today, guys. See you this Friday, and remember to stay inside.” The students laughed - _she laughed_ \- and trickled out. Marius thought he saw a university sweatshirt almost identical to his own lying on her floor, but she left the meeting before he could do a double-take. _Wait, I have a phone. Why didn’t I take a picture?_

* * *

Marius sat with his head in his hands for an unknown period of time. After a while, his ever-cheerful roommate poked his head in. 

“Yo, Pontmercy, you want pizza? Dominos is still delivering.” Marius shook his head, and Courfeyrac plopped down beside him on the bed. “What’s up? You look like you just saw a ghost. Do you believe in ghosts? I don’t, but I’m open to the possibility. Anyway. Talk to me, dude.”

“She was more like an angel than a ghost, Courf.” Courfeyrac wiggled his eyebrows and nudged his friend with his elbow. 

“Ooh, ‘she’, huh? This is definitely a pizza occasion. Gimme a sec.” He ordered two large pizzas and sat back down. “Now, tell me everything.”

“Oh, she was just beautiful, Courf! The way she explained vector calculus --”

“I didn’t know you took calculus.”

“I don’t. Anyway, she’s so smart, and when she smiled, I could hear wedding bells --”

“Does this angel mathematician have a name?”

“Her Zoom name was U. Fauchelevent? I searched her on Instagram, but I didn’t find anything.”

“Did you try just “Fauchelevent”? That might turn up more results. Also, what else does she like?”

“She likes books and fashion, and she might go to our university - “

“Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“Because I didn’t know it would help.” Courfeyrac tried a couple of different combinations. 

“Found her!” Marius grabbed for Courfeyrac’s phone as Courfeyrac read out her bio.

“‘Cosette Fauchelevent - double major in engineering and in fashion design and marketing.’” Marius scrambled to find her on his own device. “It’s ‘cfauch24601’.”

“Thank you, Courf, you’re a saint!”

“I know, happy to help. Pizza’s here!” He sprang up at the knock on their apartment door and returned with the warm pizza boxes. “Now, after you’ve followed her, what are you gonna say? I have several one liners that might work.”

“Follow her? Why would I do that?” Courfeyrac turned in shock from his slice of cheese pizza. 

“To shoot your shot, man!” Marius shook his head, eyes wide. 

“I don’t want to embarrass myself, Courf. She’ll think I’m stalking her.”

“But you _are_ stalking her?” 

“She doesn’t have to know that! Besides, I’m still looking through her account.”

“Mmhmm, sure, wait, is that Jehan? Marius, look!” The boy in question whipped his head around and inspected the picture. 

“It couldn’t be. I’m sure Jehan would have mentioned her if they knew each other.”

“I’m not so sure. Jehan knows lots of people. Just follow her, man.”

“Nope, no way. I’m just gonna keep scrolling. Oh, she looks beautiful in this sundress.” Courfeyrac nodded, already paying more attention to the pizza in front of him than what he knew would be a night of hopeless pining. 

* * *

“Courfeyrac?!”

“Hmm? What is it now?”

“Get in here, I have a crisis!” Courfeyrac appeared in the doorway once again, this time with the hint of a plan still shining in his eyes. At the sight of his raised eyebrows, Marius continued in the same frantic tone. “So I put my phone down to microwave some ramen for a midnight snack, and look who sent me a message.”

“Our neighbors with another noise complaint?”

“The angel, Courf!”

“Oh, Cosette. Is that what all of this is about?”

“What do you mean? Don’t you want to know what she said?” Courfeyrac laughed. 

“I know you’re about to tell me, so I figured I’d save my breath. Besides, I asked Jehan to set you two up.”

“You did _what_?”

“Yeah, maybe not the best idea in hindsight, but judging by your red face and painful-looking smile, she likes you too.” Marius made another attempt to compose himself, but his grin returned in moments. 

“Well, not exactly.”

“What? Now that’s a plot twist. I would have thought for sure-- what did she say?”

“Now you ask. See for yourself.” Marius extended his phone to his friend, who grabbed it with more eagerness than Marius was expecting, although not as much as he himself possessed. After a few seconds, Courfeyrac looked up again. 

“Alright. Would you like my professional opinion?”

“Since when are you a professional?”

“Marius, you don’t really think you’re my only friend that comes to me with relationship problems, do you? You’re not, in case there was still any doubt. Now, do you want my thoughts, or are you going to let this opportunity pass you right by?” Marius nodded. 

“Which is it?”

“Tell me. I can handle it.” Courfeyrac sighed. “Oh no, is it that bad? I knew it! Did I accidentally like one of her old pictures? I only made it to her sophomore year in high school, but that’ll still be difficult to explain --”

“Marius. Pull yourself together. You’re being ridiculous, and that’s coming from me, the absolute king of ridiculous. What I was about to say, before I was rudely interrupted,” he shot Marius a friendly glare, “is that, while her offer to tutor you in this vector calculus class is rather, um, unconventional, she at least noticed you in the Zoom call. That’s a good sign, I think, unless there was something so off-putting about your appearance that it made an impression.” Marius buried his head in his pillow once more and made an exasperated noise. “But I’m sure that wasn't it. Anyway, there are two reasonable courses of action. You can tell her that you went to the wrong Zoom call and look really awkward, because she’ll definitely wonder why you didn’t just leave. Or, you could accept her offer and learn vector calculus, which honestly sounds really painful, but you do you, I guess. So which is it gonna be?”

“Do any of your friends know calculus?”

* * *

Thus began Marius’ biweekly cram sessions with Combeferre. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the days that ‘Vector Calc’ met, the three of them, because Courfeyrac wasn’t one to miss out on increasingly-rare social gatherings, huddled over Combeferre’s annotated textbook and grew increasingly frustrated: Combeferre at Marius, Marius at mathematics, and Courfeyrac at the sudden drought of Law and Order reruns ( _seriously, Ferre, do you know how rare it is for Law and Order to not be on TV?_ ). Each Tuesday and Thursday, Marius tried to remember what he had learned the day before and apply it to Cosette’s additional lessons via Zoom. This was complicated by the fact that Cosette was, indeed, an angel, and Marius was, indeed, smitten.

“You’re doing really well, Marius!” Cosette flashed him one of her trademark smiles as she praised his truly awful practice quiz. _Should I feel elated or humiliated?_

“Thank you, Cosette. A 67% isn’t really what I’m going for, though.”

“That’s true, but it’s an improvement.” That was fair. At first, he had been lucky to score above a 25%. Cosette had smoothly hidden her grimace and promised that they would work on that. “How did your last quiz go?” _Oh no. If she thinks I’m actually a part of the class, then of course she’s asking about the last quiz._

“It was actually alright, believe it or not. I got a 78.” _Is that too high to pretend to get? I hope not._ Cosette beamed, and Marius inwardly rejoiced.

“Are you kidding?” _Yes._ “Considering the score you just got, I must be making these practice quizzes too hard, then. I’m sorry about that.” Marius raised his eyebrows.

“You made these practice quizzes.”

“I mean yeah, it didn’t take too long, and that’s the best way to learn, right?”

“Right. That’s what I do for my language classes.” Cosette’s eyes widened, and she leaned forward toward the screen.

“Language classes? You wouldn’t happen to take Italian, by any chance, would you? My fashion marketing professor says that all of the good designers know Italian, but I couldn’t fit it into my schedule.”

“I wish. I only had time for German, Czech, Arabic, and Tagalog, but I might be able to find some time outside of class to learn it with you.” Marius shrugged, then started to panic. _Wait, was that too forward? Normal people volunteer to learn a language for someone else, right? That’s a platonic thing that friends do._

“You’d do that for me?” _For you, anything._

“Of course! We speak French at home, and how different would Italian be, really?” 

“I have no idea. You’re the language guy, not me, remember?” They both laughed. Cosette glanced at the clock and moved to gather her books.

“I should sign off. Chetta’s going to be back at our dorm any minute now. Let me know when you want to get together again, to go over math or not.” She gave a half-wave as she ended the call. Marius returned the wave, too dumb-founded to muster up a proper goodbye. The door to his own dorm swung open and the smell of take-out entered, followed by Courfeyrac.

“So how’s our little math genius coming along?” Marius felt his face growing hot. “I had to stop by the library, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t, but I am now. What were you doing in the library, Courf? You never go in there.” Courfeyrac had the audacity to pretend to be offended.

“Marius, you wound me. I’m more than a pretty face, you know. I have, erm, intellectual pursuits. I was actually recruiting a friend, though.”

“Okay, Courf. So I think Cosette just asked me out, but did she mean it in a friend way?” 

“No, Marius, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for literally two months. You’re a terrible liar. There’s a zero percent chance that she doesn’t know you’re lying. See, Ferre, I can do math! I know math terms!” His last two statements were directed at their mutual friend who was waiting in the hall. Combeferre gave an almost imperceptible smile before setting the rest of the take-out bags on the desk.

“I’ve apparently been summoned.”

“Yeah, Ferre, tell Marius what a terrible liar he is.”

“Am not, Courf!”

“Your nose twitches when you lie, Marius. She’d have to be more nearsighted than me to miss it.” Courfeyrac put up his hand for a high-five that Combeferre returned with far less energy, as Courfeyrac-levels of energy were almost impossible for anyone else. “Besides, she sent you a message. Seriously, how did you not see that?” Marius lunged for his phone, knowing that Courfeyrac would do the same, but his fingers closed around air.

“‘My darling Marius’, aww, you’re her darling, that’s adorable”, Courfeyrac teased affectionately as Marius sunk deeper into his sweatshirt. “‘I’ve enjoyed our study sessions more than you know. You’re a really fast learner, and you seem like—’, okay, this seems personal, here you go.” Marius took the phone and continued to read, silently this time. “‘You seem like a really great guy. I happen to have a really great movie, and it’s in Italian. Would you like to come over tonight and watch it with me? We can make popcorn too, if you’d like.’” He smiled so widely he thought his face would explode. He took a breath and replied. “Does six o’clock work for you?”

“I’ll be waiting,” was the swift reply.


End file.
